


Thread Locker

by getyouwhateverthepayne



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M, Save Me, reminiscent fluff???? did i spell that right, this is the first thing ive done in 4 months who am i anymore, twenty somethings living in new york bc why not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-29
Updated: 2014-11-29
Packaged: 2018-02-27 10:40:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2689769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/getyouwhateverthepayne/pseuds/getyouwhateverthepayne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Because Zayn sleeps along the same wall Harry does, a privilege of proximity that he doesn’t take for granted. </p><p>Just on the other side.</p><p>(Or the one where Zayn loves Harry, Harry loves Niall, and it's mostly reminiscent)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thread Locker

**Author's Note:**

> what the fuck
> 
> i've gone through a terrible 4 month long writer's block and this piece literally feels like a very constipated shit that's finally come out after 4 months of intense intervals of pushing very hard for something and then huge waves of self-doubt where i never thought i'd write anything ever again.
> 
> i even contemplated switching from my english major. it was bad. this may be bad. i've been out of the swing of things, but i'm trying to get back. sorry for the poop imagery.
> 
> please lemme know what you think/any feedback etc!
> 
> you can find me on tumblr at [donechapel](http://www.donechapel.tumblr.com) (my main blog) or at [getyouwhateverthepayne](http://www.getyouwhateverthepayne.tumblr.com) :-)

Zayn and Harry are adults. They share an apartment now, have jobs, even have a balcony to themselves where they stay before it gets too cold at night, after summer passes. It's warm still, when Zayn gets back late after his shift, but just on the cusp of what will be fall in a couple weeks. At twenty-three, they’re drowning in student loans, but they’re okay. They have a nice view of the park from here.

Harry's lying in the dark, finishing up a phone call to his mother about laundry because he’s been doing it for five years now and still manages to put the wrong type of soap in, and he tucks his hair back behind his ear the same way he pushes Zayn's hair back whenever it gets too long. It happens a lot more recently because they’ve both taken to growing it out. Harry’s upset because it was, of course, his idea, and Zayn, of course, pulls it off better. But Harry’s still tucking it behind Zayn’s ear every chance he gets, taking care of him in that clucky way sometimes, because it’s just how he is, just like his mother. Like he’s got everything together, like he’s in the place to be mothering people about their own lives.

Zayn overhears him conversing excitedly about his mother’s neighbor’s new baby now, promising he’ll come visit soon, he swears, wants to see them. He’s got a fascination with starting a family, Harry, always stopping to congratulate women with bumps or newborn babies, but he's really just as dumb about his future as Zayn. Both of them lost, floating. Zayn sees this sometimes, that maybe Harry's even more lost than he is, letting things take him places without any real direction, and he sometimes watches him as he drifts. Falling in and out of cliques, friends, night clubs. 

Zayn wears it on the outside but Harry's internal, mostly. Everything works fast and frantic inside but he wears a calm face, bright and easygoing, so you never really know when things are going wrong, when he’s on the falling out side rather than the falling in. 

When he’s falling out is when Harry seems to realize he has no solid footing beneath him, when he comes to, when he wakes up, and that’s when he usually starts to panic and go through all those newspaper clippings he has saved in his drawer, but then he latches onto someone else and he’s safe again.

Harry’s face is an open book, but only for the small stuff. He can't keep hidden the little petulant pouts when someone wears his favorite shirt (i.e., when Zayn wears his favorite shirt and wears it better), or when someone insults a piece of his writing or tells him he’s put in the wrong wattage lightbulb (Zayn’s only done the latter because Harry’s writing is bloody brilliant), but he'll never let the big things show. When he failed the MCAT junior year of college and every hope he'd ever had of becoming a pediatrician was effectively stopped in its tracks, he bought himself a beer and laughed about it with his friends who actually had passed, who hadn’t blanked the minute the examiner handed out the test, and he stayed up late in a bar telling everyone that his jokes about majoring in English were apparently coming true. 

Then he cried about it later to Zayn, let him tuck him in bed and pat his hair and let him take care of him for once, because Zayn felt his delicacy even before the first tears had started falling, had known what he needed, had known that even though you could retake it, Harry wouldn’t.

Harry doesn't let things show except in front of Zayn. He lets Zayn see it all. 

Zayn thought it was a privilege the first time it happened, that first time Harry just broke open, thought it was incredible that he was close enough to see the vulnerable, red-eyed and watery and slumped shoulders Harry Styles. Because he’s the one everyone loves and trusts with their secrets that he never tells, the one they invite to their parties and try to emulate. He still sometimes feels like it's a privilege that Harry — the person with a million friends gracefully kept at arm's length — considers Zayn to be different, the person he tells things.

Zayn takes another sip of beer and his slightly buzzed hands work on the neglected laptop in front of him. Glittery cat stickers decorate the apple logo, starting to peel off around the edges, and he thinks of the cat Harry said he’d wanted to get from ASPCA today. Zayn had said no because he doesn’t need another Harry hanging around their apartment.

He drops a small dot of blue thread locker on one of the screws and twists it into place, working methodically, because he’s done this a thousand times. When he majored in computer science nearly two years ago, he hadn't necessarily planned on working in a barely above-the-red Best Buy on 23rd street, but it’s a steady income that’s slowly chipping down on his loans, so he’ll keep it. He's not technically supposed to take the electronics home with him, but he's the best worker there by a mile and the most competent when it comes to repairs, so he gets away with a lot of things he probably shouldn’t. His manager was willing to pay double just to have him accept the offer for work, so he basically lets Zayn just do what he likes. 

Like when Harry comes in the store after work on Fridays and just lounges, going on about his day and the intricacies of the complex social dramas that play out in the publishing house he interns for on 29th. Zayn listens intently while he works, to Harry complaining about that pretentious dick who works in marketing who always has some new ridiculous Republican spiel about abortion that Harry swears he'll one day turn into a character in a novel.

Zayn's favorite times are when Harry goes on a little rambling rant, not that loud or angry, but he's still worked up, lying on his back on the couch in the back, his lips flushing darker than his cheeks, and if anyone walked in it would look like Zayn's his neglectful therapist, trying to stifle laughs whenever Harry gets a little too upset. Zayn sometimes eggs him on just to watch the way his lips form words.

Zayn's only kissed him once, and Harry doesn't remember. 

They were fourteen, maybe fifteen, laying on the bed in Harry's childhood bedroom, after having just gotten drunk for the first time. Harry's parents were gone for the weekend on their second honeymoon in Paris. 

Harry adores his parents, the simple love they've got. He was talking about it then, after having one drink too many from his step-dad's secret liquor cabinet in the basement, and he was pink-cheeked, rosy, his eyes big and happy, glassed over, going on and on about how much he wants to find a love like his mom's and Robin's and get married and have a bunch of kids someday. And maybe Zayn was more than tipsy himself, Harry's head a welcome weight in his lap, because once Harry started giggling about something Zayn said, maybe Zayn started laughing too. Zayn pushes it out of his mind whenever the memory of how it felt when Harry began to kiss back after a few seconds of dumb surprise comes rushing into his mind, which happens sometimes when he's drunk and lying in bed alone. Zayn doesn't like to think about it. It was always just a drunk thought. They were both just curious.

Harry, for his part, is resting now on the outdoor lounge chair just beside Zayn, his eyes closed in small swooping crescents across the raised apples of his cheeks. He's not asleep, Zayn knows that. His hand is still loosely gripping his phone, the screen just switching to black from where he hung up the call. 

Harry can rest anywhere, anytime, just give him a chair and he's out, but he's never usually asleep for real. Just resting, thinking, in his head. It's his way of being alone. While Zayn needs a room, a physical space where no one else is and where no one else can bother him so that he can find his sanity again after dealing with stubborn customers or just life in general, Harry just needs to close his eyes. He just needs his head.

He continues working, and Harry continues resting, and that's how they are. It's easy. Gentle. A rhythm they've developed over the years, one that he doesn't want to break. They fit this way, occupy the spaces that the other leaves empty, and they dance a routine that they created when they were eleven and now know by memory. Zayn doesn’t want to move, doesn’t want to break things. Things are close enough to perfect as they are.

Because Zayn sleeps along the same wall Harry does, a privilege of proximity that he doesn’t take for granted. 

Just on the other side.

When Zayn’s phone blinks one in the morning, he brings Harry inside.

+

It’s November when the nights finally start getting a little too brisk, fall pushing insistently onto their shoulders, summer leaving to make way for clouds and colder air and cutting rain. Zayn thinks maybe that’ll help him clear his head, too. Because recently he’s been thinking more about Harry’s lips, feels more of a punch in his gut when Harry does little things like buy him his favorite shrimp salad from the twenty-four hour place down the street. It’s things he always does without Zayn asking, but instead of repaying him in thanks like always, Zayn’s losing his words, too busy feeling his heart push against his chest. Maybe he’s just getting older, too sentimental.

Harry tells him one day on the couch in the back that the Republican dickhead in marketing in the publishing house on 29th asked him on a date. In the midst of Zayn snorting, Harry tells him he said yes.

+

His name is Niall. 

He comes for dinner one night, walking in behind Harry, and Zayn’s lounging on the couch in nothing but sweats, a box of half-eaten pizza on his bare stomach. Some dumb Netflix movie that he stopped paying attention to hours ago is still on the television. When Harry had bought it on a whim, the seventy-two inch flatscreen, Zayn had spent the next week figuring out the wires. It’s his pride and joy. He doesn’t sit up, just glances over.

Niall is cute, is the thing. Bright-eyed, just like Harry, blonde and more cherub-like than Zayn would have guessed from Harry’s less than complimentary descriptions. Zayn should have realized, now that he thinks about it, what was going on when Harry couldn’t get him out of his mind all those times. He wasn’t a very observant therapist after all. Harry has his arm on Niall’s elbow, and Niall looks a little nervous and red-cheeked but still friendly and eager to please, and the first thing that’s out of his mouth is,

“So _you’re_ the mysterious Zayn! Harry talks about you so much, it’s great to finally meet you.”

Zayn doesn’t say anything, just smiles a little tightly, nods, and turns up the volume.

He wants to die in that instant, sitting there like a mess as Harry’s arm rests comfortably around another boy, a cute boy in a cardigan, and he wants Niall to die too, wants everything to end, and maybe he can throw himself off the balcony or maybe throw Niall, just to get away from this situation. But he can’t, because they’re talking in the kitchen area and from all Zayn can hear, Niall’s _nice._

He doesn’t like the way his heart stops pushing against his chest and starts caving in instead.

That night, when he’s lying in bed, trying to sleep but really just staring at the ceiling, tracing patterns with his eyes, he pretends he doesn’t hear the sounds coming from the other room. 

+

The thing that Zayn tries to ignore the most is seeing Harry do little motherly things for Niall. Straightening his shirt if he ever stays the night, making breakfast for the three of them but it’s just things Niall loves now, like bacon and eggs and sausages — a lot of sausages. 

He’s entitled and petulant, he knows he is, mostly fostered by his inability to hate Niall. When he brings up the abortion issue in a fruitless attempt to divide them over something, Niall just smiles and shakes his head. 

“Harry’s made me see the light on that one. And on a lot of things, to be fair. He’s very convincing, isn’t he?”

Zayn looks over at Harry across their small kitchen table, the mahogany one Harry had picked out with Zayn eight months ago, the one they’d saved up for together, and he’s never seen him more bashful. Niall’s still talking.

“But you’d know that, Zayn, living with him this long, wouldn’t you?”

Zayn doesn’t answer, just stuffs a few bits of potato in his mouth, which on any other Thursday would be Harry’s samosas.

He does know. He knows Harry can be very convincing when he wants to be. It’s mostly because you never want to see his face fall. Not the way it does when he’s on the way down.

Which is why, a few weeks later, when Zayn’s on the balcony and looking at the park disinterestedly and smoking a cigarette even though he’d told himself he’d quit and when Harry comes up behind him and hooks his chin over his shoulder, Zayn immediately takes him up in his arms. Because Harry only does this when he’s on the way down.

“What happened?” Zayn asks, hurriedly stubbing out his cigarette and dropping it over the balcony. He gets a lot of flack from their neighbor downstairs who claims to keep finding ash on his railing, but this is more important, he figures. “What’s wrong?” Zayn asks into his hair again, feeling Harry’s shoulders slump and breath catch. Zayn waits. “Is it Niall?” he asks more quietly. This gets a response. 

Zayn takes him into his bed that night, shushes Harry’s feeble protests, and tucks him in and tucks back his hair and lets him cry for ages into his chest. Some part of him tells another part of him to stop thinking that whenever Harry drifts, it leads him back to Zayn.

Harry eventually falls asleep, because he can drop off anywhere, just give him a pillow and a steady heartbeat to listen to and he’s gone, but Zayn doesn’t. He stays awake until the first grayish pink lights of sunrise start to peek through his shades. Harry’s constant heat nearly lulls him into a doze then, when the slats of his window shades let in light that falls directly on his face, warm and pleasant, but then Harry starts to wake up slowly and rubs his eyes and sits up, eyelids still puffy. Zayn pretends he’s asleep while Harry sits there for a while. And then he dips down to press a light kiss to Zayn’s mouth, but only on the corner.

Zayn stifles the gasp of air he wants to take in, and Harry leaves, his feet shuffling and stumbling clumsily out the door.

+

Zayn and Harry are adults. They’re twenty four and still drowning in student loans, but at least they can see the shore from here. Harry’s now got an actual job at the publishing house, and his novel is almost done, the one that he never even told Zayn he’d been officially working on, and he’s been falling less and less, that drawer full of newspaper clippings of job offerings and past achievements getting less and less light. Zayn’s got a job as a computer systems analyst and it’s not exactly what he wants, he’d rather be developing software because this requires “interpersonal skills” that are just not in his programming apparently, but he’s the best by a mile and they offered him double if he’d take the job because he was the highest in his class and went to a prestigious school. 

They see each other less because their schedules are off, but Harry’s still talking about that cat at ASPCA, and one day Zayn agrees, out of the blue, because he figures he could handle another Harry hanging around the apartment. 

When Harry finally hears the word “okay” come out of Zayn’s mouth, both of them dozing on the couch, curled up into each other the way Harry likes and the way Zayn allows just because it’s Harry and Harry’s convincing, when he hears Zayn say it quiet and warm, Harry positively glows, grabbing Zayn’s hand and turning him around to make sure he’s serious. Zayn says that yes, he’s serious, and no, we can’t call it Chubbsies, and Harry cuts him off with a hand on Zayn’s jaw and a pair of lips on Zayn’s lips.

This time Zayn doesn’t work to stifle the gasp of air that he wants to take in, and Harry responds by pressing him down on his back against the cushions.

When Harry pulls back, only to keep sucking kisses into Zayn’s neck, he can read him, just for a moment, the look in Harry’s eyes, and he can tell he’s on the way up.

Zayn, for his part, thinks he can feel the fall straight ahead.

He doesn’t say anything as Harry starts to smile into his neck.


End file.
